Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

Podcast 314: Basin Street Records Celebrates 15 Years of Music

Straight No Chaser is the place for jazz lovers (and those who will soon be jazz lovers) to enjoy podcasts with their favorite music and artists. Winner of the 2017 JazzTimes Readers' Poll for Best Podcast, your host Jeffrey Siegel will take you inside the world of jazz, from the new releases to the best festiva;s to remembrances of jazz legends.

Fifteen years ago, Marc Samuels
decided to add a part-time job running a record label to his
already busy life. Since that date, his Basin Street Records has
signed a dozen artists and has released nearly 50 projects
including 2012 Grammy winner Rebirth of New Orleans by the
Rebirth Brass Band.

To celebrate their anniversary, Basin Street
Records artists will be performing all across the world this month,
from Jason Marsalis w/ Marcus Roberts at the London Jazz
Festival Nov 17 to Dr. Michael White and the Original Liberty
Jazz Band at Xavier University in New Orleans Nov
27. Rebirth Brass
Band will be opening 8 shows for the Red Hot Chili
Peppers (Nov 14-26) and Theresa Andersson will be appearing at
Byronz in Shreveport, LA on Thursdays all month. Irvin
Mayfield's NOJO Jam at Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse in New
Orleans will take place on Wednesdays in November.

I spoke with Samuels about how the label
began, the joys and frustrations of working in the music business,
what HBO’s Treme has
meant to New Orleans music, and what the label has planned for the
future.
Click here to listen to our conversation, including musical
selections from Basin Street Records artists like:

Kermit Ruffins – “I Got a Treme Woman“ from
Happy
Talk.Kermit
and his band the Barbecue Swingers signed the first Basin
Street Records' recording contract, the first of which was recorded
on November 14, 1997 in front of a packed house
at Tipitina's.
That recording was later named The Barbecue Swingers Live and
was released in February 1998. Since then, Kermit has
continued to record for Basin Street on a regular basis, and
included this original on his 2010 release. If you find
yourself in NOLA, you can almost always catch Kermit and his band
Tuesdays at Bullet’s Sports Bar and Thursdays atVaughan's
Lounge!

Los Hombres Calientes – “El Barrio” from
Los Hombres Calientes, Vol. 1. Cyrille Neville
guests on this track from the top Latin Jazz album that helped
catapult Basin Street Records to national prominence in 1998. The
band included Jason Marsalis on drums for this recording, and was
led by legendary percussionist Bill Summers (Headhunters),
trumpeter Irin Mayfield, bassist David Pulphus and pianist Victor
Atkins III.

Henry Butler – “North American Idiosyncrasies”
from PiaNOLA Live. Called “the pride
of New Orleans" by no less an authority than Dr. John, Butler is
the latest in the Crescent City's lineage of piano players going
back from Professor Longhair to James Booker; Tuts Washington to
Jelly Roll Morton. This tune was composed by clarinetist/educator
Alvin Batiste, with whom Butler studied at Southern University. It
was Batiste who arranged, somewhere in the mid-1970s, for Butler to
sit down for with ‘Fess himself.

Dr. Michael White - “I Love You Too Much To
Ever Leave You” from Adventures
InNew
OrleansJazz, Part
2.
Perhaps the most important source of traditional
New Orleans
music still performing and teaching, Dr. White has
received the National
Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship
Award; and the Louisiana
Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for
the Humanities. He also won the Offbeat Magazine Best of
the Beat Award as
Clarinetist of the Year, and Gambit Magazine’s
Big Easy Entertainment Award for
Traditional Jazz Artist of the Year.

Rebirth Brass Band – “Do It Again” from
Rebirth inNew Orleans. Basin Street
records’ first Grammy winning release (Best Regional
Roots Music Album) featured this raucous collection
of brass players, currently on tour opening for alt-rock gods the
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Formed by the Frazier brothers, Phil and
Keith, along with Basin Street labelmate Kermit Ruffins in 1983,
the Rebirth Brass band has gone from playing on corners in the
French Quarter to selling out concert halls across the world and
appearing in David Simon’s HBO hit

Irvin Mayfield –
“Ninth Ward Blues” from Tremé. Irvin
Mayfield. Mayfield has
been serving as Cultural Ambassador of the City of
New Orleans and State of Louisiana since 2003, just around the time
he founded and became Artistic Director of The New Orleans Jazz
Orchestra (NOJO). This track, from his debut CD in 1998, features a
crew of New Orleans heavies, including David Pulphus on bass,
Delfeayo Marsalis on trombone and Donald Harrison on sax.

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About the Podcast

A blog with interviews, reviews, features and podcasts on jazz of the past, present and future. Two time winner of the JazzTimes Readers' Poll for Best Podcast.